Heating system for new house construction in Colorado

[goldenboy]

No an option due to Energy Code Reasons on Xcel is out of capacity?

New construction can't be gas in the town of Crested Butte- for heat, the stove, water heater, anything. Town council decision.

[Foggy_Goggles]

New construction can't be gas in the town of Crested Butte- for heat, the stove, water heater, anything. Town council decision.

Interesting. And CB gets their electricity from Tri State which is primarily natural gas and coal power plants. Any consideration to upgrading the grid capacity?

[NBABUCKS1]

Interesting. And CB gets their electricity from Tri State which is primarily natural gas and coal power plants. Any consideration to upgrading the grid capacity?

burned somewhere else at least - (for now) - NIMBY!. Cool thing about electricity is in the future the generation can come from anything in the future, and in the summer it's probably a good amount of solar.

Looked it up though 36% is hydro and wind right now

[AlpiNord]

Heat pump? Property has natural gas so that's the other option. I'd like to do a heat pump for climate change considerations (our electric co-op is on a good path to decarbonization, and I'll have PV panels to the extent that's relevant), but I don't want to be a sucker paying for supplemental standard electric heat if the climate here can't really support a heat pump in the cold months. Don't need A/C.

And yes house will be designed with passive solar as a primary design feature (with big eaves to keep sun out in summer).

Thanks in advance-

Is this replacing your current house on the same property?

My heat pump water heater is in the same room as my active solar system so benefits (as does my office via a vent) from the ambient heat from the 300 gallon tank and a fan coil unit which kicks on when the panels are heating the water. (Another fan coil directly heats my office to toasty.)

I keep wondering about swapping out our LP boiler for a heat pump (1,000 ft above you) vs sticking with LP on a new instantaneous boiler due to lower efficiency when the temps drop....unless the heat pump could benefit from passive or active solar gains.

[AlpiNord]

Last year I had the A/C unit pulled and replaced it with a mid-quality central heat pump (Bosch SEER 20), coinciding with a solar installation. We left the furnace in place to act as the air handler and supplemental heat. The heat pump is rated to produce heat down to -10F ambient. The HVAC contractor recommended setting the changeover point to propane at +10F.

We've overall been very happy. I did find that I needed to bump the changeover point to supplemental up to +15F - our house is drafty enough that if the wind was blowing hard, the heat pump had trouble keeping up. As noted above, the heat pump does not blow as hot as a furnace, even more so the colder it is outside. The combo of solar and heat pump saves us a LOT of money on our monthly utility bills compared to running fully on propane. Granted it's been pretty warm this year but in the last 30 days my aux heat has kicked in for less than 5hr of runtime. We do have a vaulted great room with a very large air volume that's pretty slow to warm up and we eventually want to add a wood burning stove (both for ambience and to help kickstart warming that space).

I think it does depend on what type of overall construction strategy you're going with as well as where specifically the house is. Much colder climate than mine and it might not make as much sense. If you're going for a really airtight, highly insulated construction, forced air might not be ideal. My parents built a ICF, extremely airtight house and went with hot water in floor heat that works great. Definitely some options but I think in the milder areas of Colorado with traditional stick built construction, the heat pump is a great option.

Interesting about your set point for LP to kick in. It's been in the 20s here and with normal winter temps, the LP would be kicking every night. We're a little higher with generally less exposure to wind than your place.

As a general comment regarding force air (or base boards) vs infloor is that with radiant infloor excels in higher volume spaces because it warms you where you are a lower temps due to the radiant/conductive heat. Forced air needs to warm the whole volume of space for you to feel comfortable. If you do have passive solar gains, you can place your return air duct to pull excess heat and cycle it through the system and into other parts of your house.

[Name Redacted]

We added solar last year. Switched cookstove to induction from gas too. Our excel bill (gas/electric) is like $69 a month now in the cold months. House has tons of passive solar, radiant infloor (staple up w/ insulation), NG gas fireplace, electric baseboard and we use them in that order basically. Boiler is NG which heats the radiant and hot water. House is a log cabin, and sealed up tighter than a duck's butt, tested it via a blower door test a few years ago.

I have considered adding a heat pump, and probably will, but not really in that big of a hurry, because honestly it wouldn't make that big of a difference (see above). I think I would add a few batteries and a charging station first.

Now, if AC was needed, which in Durango it certainly is unless you are like on the N side of a hill or something, I would be looking at a mini split for sure. Hopefully it is a few years out from it getting that hot here at 9k'.


And regarding the induction cooktop, I like it far more than the gas. Look into some of the studies coming out about in-home air quality and it just makes a lot of sense. Takes a little getting used to but whatever.